L.A. Auto Show: 2010 Suzuki Kizashi Offers Affordable All-Wheel Drive

I didn’t even know about this car until just 3 days ago! I was looking for an affordable quality car that offered a good warranty and possibly awd, and a co-worker of mine mentioned the Suzuki SX4, he said I should check it out. So I went to the local Suzuki dealer and I did test drive the SX4, great car and very competatively priced for the equipment you get. But while I was at the dealership I spotted what I thought was some sort of new Audi with a body style I wasn’t familiar with. The dealer said oh no that is not an Audi, that is the new Suzuki Kizashi! I was about to say Gesundheit! and offer him a tissue, but then I saw the lettering on the back of the car, and it turns out the dealer hadn’t just sneezed, that is the name of this new beauty of a sedan.
So we walked over to the sedan, I walked all the way around, and caught all of the angles of the car, and no matter which angle you look from this car is a class act. So he suggested we take it for a test drive.
Once on the road the first thing I noticed was how smooth the engine was and the ride quality is top notch, but it’s not completely disconnected from the road like some of the more cushier luxury sedans are. That is a HUGE plus for this car, specially for people like me who like a comfortable ride but I still have decades to go before I’m a senior citizen so I don’t want to feel like I’m driving a Lincoln LOL.  He suggested we hop on the highway and directed me to a turn off that lead to an unfinished neighborhood on the side of a hill that has a newly paved road that snakes back on forth up and down the hill. Once there he said to really test it out, take the corners at a competative pace to get a feel for the cars handeling. Since there is no one actually living in that area yet I was able to do just that.  This is where this car will completely undo ANY competition brand in the price range and even surpass cars costing 10 to 15k more than this car! The car just gripped thru everything I could throw at it, every turn, wind, and manuvuer this car just ate it all up and never became unstable. I owned and drove an Audi A4 for almost 2 years (before I finally gave up on it because the repairs bills almost ate me alive), and I can tell you when it comes to handeling the Kizashi can hang right in there with the A4. My Audi had more HP, so in a straight line it was faster than Kizashi, but you know what? The Kizashi is a blast to drive already, so I can live without that straightline extra HP I had with the A4, after all that extra HP I got with the Audi came at a BIG price, not just the sticker price of the Audi, (which I bought used with 40k miles on it) but also the maintenace of the A4 and the non-stop repair bills once the A4 went out of warranty. Now I totally understand why almost all of the used Audi’s you see for sale are conviniently just out of the warranty period….. obviously because actual Audi owners already know what I ended up finding out…they are repair nightmares on wheels! lol
The version of Kizashi I test drove was the GTS version, which came extremely well equipped. It didn’t have navigation but according to the dealer that is coming in summer for people like myself that want navigation to come with the car.
So here are a few bottom lines. Kizashi is an amazingly competent car and and will out-handle ANYTHING in the same price range and even cars priced way above.
If all you care about is straighline speed, then maybe a camaro would suit you better. Kizashi is already faster than almost anything else in the catagory, with the 185hp 4 cylinder though.
But if you’re like me, and you put more value the total package such as top notch handeling, highest bang for the buck pricing, awesome warranty that is fully transferable with no deductable, uniqueness, classy looks without looking gaudy (ie..new sonata so overdone!), then you won’t find anything with that total combination of elements that you will in Kizashi.
So what about the SX4 I test drove?  Well the funny thing is my roomate came along with me for the test drive, and he was so impressed with SX4 and the fact that it’s AWD and it’s pricing that he’s decided to trade in his Honda and he’s picking up a new SX4 AWD next tuesday haha. Needless to say I’ll be borrowing his SX4 now and then even though he doesn’t know it yet!
I’m now pretty set on picking up a new Kizashi, so I’m going to wait until summer, so that I can stash away as much extra dollars as I can until then so I can put down a big down payment to keep my monthly payments low, and then probably walk away with a GTS or possibly an SLS (SLS is the top-dawg version) sometime between June and August.
Sidenote -
(I also found out from the dealer that a V6 version of Kizashi is coming out soon too, supposed to be somewhere between 260hp to 280hp. That’s WAY more horsepower than I need but I know some people have a V6 fixation so they will have that option too. There is supposed to be a hybrid version on the way too).